How to Choose the Best Customer Training Software for Your Business

For SaaS companies, there’s no denying the impact customer education has on your bottom line. The reason for that is simple: in order for a customer to stick with your product, they need to know how to use it. That’s where a customer training software comes in.   

This kind of learning tool is basically an LMS platform for customer training. It’s the most effective way to build content, organize it, and monitor user progress throughout an entire customer lifecycle. 

There are dozens of options for customer training software out there, each with scores of useful features and benefits—so, how do you choose? We’ve done the research for you, breaking down the most important elements you need to look for in a proper customer training platform for your organization.

What are the benefits of a customer training software? 

A customer training platform has a few long-term benefits beyond being a centralized space to monitor learning. Proper training can lead to faster time to value, which not only improves product usage but boosts revenue to support your bottom line.  

Improved product adoption: When customers are confident in how to use a product or service, they are less likely to abandon it. By training customers, your customers will be more active on your product or with your service. 

Greater customer engagement: Learner engagement has a direct impact on performance. A customer training software can lead to a positive customer experience and faster product enablement. 

Improved customer retention: If your customers are properly trained on your product and are receiving value from it, they are more likely to stay customers. A well-known study from Harvard Business School shows that improving customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by anywhere from 25% to 95%.  

Reduced training costs: A learning platform might have additional overhead, but in the long run, your company will save valuable time and money. Using a customer training LMS means you can create pre-packaged lesson plans or create academies of training content, rather than hire additional team members.

Increased revenue: In addition to retaining happy customers, you can create additional revenue streams for your organization by charging to access your most popular lessons.  

Standard features of a customer training platform

Every customer training platform is going to boast that it’s the best—but in truth, a software only works if people can properly use it. And not all LMSs cater to companies looking to train their customers. In order to build a library of training materials and share it with customers, there are a few features that are essential to any customer training software. They allow for ease of use, simple content creation tools, and friendly interfaces for a positive user experience. 

Content creation

Content creation will be important because the majority of your training will be original materials specific to your company. A flexible and robust authoring tool on the customer training platform will allow you to easily create engaging content for your customers. Ease of use is important when looking for a customer training platform—the easier it is to use, the quicker you will get training to your customers. An easy-to-use authoring tool, like 360Learning’s award-winning Authoring Tool, will help you quickly create courses without spending multiple hours learning to use the platform. 

Once you start creating content, you’ll want it to be as engaging as possible, You will want to leverage different types of content, like video, presentations, and voice recordings to keep your learners interested. Look for platforms that support multiple formats, like PowerPoint, audio, MP4, and video, and can host assessments and surveys to gain valuable feedback on content.

Assessments 

Assessments allow you to quiz your customers on training. This will help you understand if they are absorbing the lessons or if you need to update the training because it isn’t clear or it is no longer relevant. 

In your platform, you’ll want the option for multiple choice, true/false, single selection, ordered questions, linker questions, and open-ended responses. Additionally, platforms like 360Learning offer more advanced questions: 

• Pick-a-point so a customer can indicate the correct zone on an image. 
• Video pitch allows customers to record and share videos of themselves giving a response. 
• Screencast demo lets customer record their screen and share the video as their response.

Custom learning paths 

No two learners are alike. Personalized learning paths ensure all customer roles have access to a training process that fits their unique needs. 

With self-paced learning, every piece of learning material—including documents, webinars, online training, tutorials, etc.—is available at the same time and in one space (a.k.a., your customer training software). 

Learners can access the materials they need in the moment they need them, rather than only seeing certain materials cherry-picked by a customer success manager. It helps learners gain access to quality experiences regardless of their learning type or knowledge background. 

Custom learning paths also allow you to combine different modules of your organization’s content with sourced media so you don’t have to spend hours creating content that might already exist elsewhere. 

Mobile learning 

To supercharge your self-paced learning, mobile learning, or mLearning, is a safe investment.

Customers want the ability to learn on their own time. When customers take training on their own time, they are more motivated and engaged, which will ultimately result in a better, more positive learning outcome. 

Beyond the benefits your customers receive from a training solution, mobile learning saves organizations time and money. Tap-and-learn content means companies don’t need to spend money sending learners to physical training experiences, like conferences or workshops. 

Plus, mobile is the way of the future. The mobile learning market is slated to grow annually at a steady rate of 25%, reaching over $38 million by 2028.

Reporting and analytics

Analytics for a customer training platform can get tricky—you want to make sure you have access to the metrics you need without becoming overwhelmed with options. 

At the very basic level, you need a program that looks at usage stats for your online courses so you know what lessons are the most helpful for your customers and what could be improved. 

Statistics like completion rate, courses accessed, and drop-off rate are useful to know. You also want to track the progress of individual users within their own learning initiatives. This will help you keep customers on track with their training needs and identify roadblocks to product adoption. 

A relevance score is a unique reporting feature that helps content authors ensure that their training is up-to-date and understood by their learners. 360Learning customers use the relevance score to optimize course content to boost course completion rates. 

Gamification 

Game-based learning, or gamification, is an effective way to give your customer training a boost. Sprinkling gamified elements into a learning experience is useful for most learners: 72% of people agree that gamification motivates them to work harder.

Some popular things to look for in a customer training software include: 

• Leaderboards 
• Interactive quizzes and dashboards 
• Badges and rewards 
• Challenge mode, allowing learners to compete against each other

Integrations

Most platforms you’ll come across allow you to integrate tools from outside organizations in order to build training courses, or academies. This lets you include sought-after external content—like Ted Talks or LinkedIn Learning courses—within learning paths without having to reinvent the wheel. 

Integrations can also help streamline your workflow, reducing time spent on admin work or duplicate data entry. Some commonly sought-after integrations include Salesforce, Zoom, and LinkedIn Learning.

Customer support

Even the most user-friendly customer training platform will still have its challenges. When you get stuck, you’ll want a smooth customer support experience. 

Look for a company that has a robust support offering. A company should offer a way to contact a support rep through email or chat. A Help Center, like 360Learning’s Knowledge Base, will provide you with step-by-step guides to answer frequently asked questions.

Another helpful addition would be a customer success partner that can help you optimize the software and ensure you use it to its full extent. 

Monetization opportunities

You can also turn your training content into extra revenue streams with monetization features. You can maximize the impact of your training materials by creating a public catalog to share with your customers. 

When selling training to your customers (or your customer’s customers), you will want the ability to create a public course catalog and process payments. This will allow your customers to browse training and seamlessly purchase it. 

Pricing models for customer training platforms 

Much like a learning management system, customer training programs follow a SaaS subscription model—meaning customers pay for access on a rolling basis (month-to-month or annually). 

Within that model, every company implements different pricing tiers. Here are a few examples of what you might encounter: 

• Free trial: A window to test out a new product before a paid subscription kicks in. 
• Pay per active users: Rather than pay for one blanket license, you only pay for the number of people enrolled in your platform.
• Pay per course: You only pay for the courses you build.   
• Freemium: A basic subscription that’s free, with options to pay for more services.  
• One-time license purchase: You pay a large fee upfront and can keep the service indefinitely. 

Costs can run anywhere from free (with fee-based add-ons) to $10,000 a year or more. Choosing the right platform for your organization will depend on your budget and the learning goals for customers.

You need customer training software that encourages collaborative learning

At 360Learning, we are leading the collaborative learning movement, and the data backs up the importance of collaboration: according to Gallup, training that’s collaborative sees 6x higher engagement. 

When people work together, they get immediate feedback, ask questions, and reinforce concepts. The end result is a customer base that’s committed to your product. 

Learn how 360Learning’s customer training platform can help you improve your entire customer lifecycle, from onboarding and adoption to improved customer satisfaction.